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Guardian Angel

GUARDIAN ANGEL, My Story, My Britain, charts the journey of a journalist and writer who moved from darling of the left to champion of the moral high ground. This memoir of her personal and professional life
reflects the cultural changes in society over more than three decades.

The book is among the opening titles released by Melanie's new
publishing company, Melanie Phillips Electric Media. It can be purchased
from emBooks.com as well as from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and iBooks.

From the Spectator blog

Melanie’s updates by email

Archive for January 2012

Last Thursday night I was on BBC TV’s Question Time in Plymouth, which you can view here. The last question on the show came from a woman who asked whether, ‘since Israel has many more nuclear weapons than Iran’, we should agree with President Obama’s statement that no option (in other words, war with Iran) should be ruled out.

Was there ever a more perverse and self-destructive society than the contemporary West? In its attitude to the Middle East and the Islamic world, it appears to suffer from the political equivalent of auto-immune disease: turning on its allies while embracing its enemies.

As has long been clear, something seems to have gone very badly wrong with the culture of British policing. While many police officers do a sterling job in preventing crime and promoting public tranquillity, barely a week goes past without some fresh revelation of gross incompetence or allegation of cronyism — or even corruption — by the police.

War with Iran is a truly fearsome prospect. Its likely consequences would include attacks on US air bases from thousands of Iranian missiles, the unleashing of terrorist attacks within the US and Europe, the rocketing of Israeli towns from the tens of thousands of missiles trained on Israel from Lebanon, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz thus paralysing western oil supplies, and doubtless other horrors.

The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith was really terrific on the BBC’s Today programme this morning – calm and persistent and, despite interruptions so bad it was impossible at times to hear what was being said at all, managing to get his point across and convey his essential decency and reasonableness.

When Sasha Laxton was born five years ago, his parents decided they wanted to avoid classifying him as either a boy or a girl. They felt that to do so was a kind of ‘sexual stereotyping’ which had to be avoided at all costs.

Oh, the irony of it! The fear that the Scots are heading for a referendum in which they would vote for independence from England drove the Prime Minister last week to launch a campaign to prevent such an outcome.

About Melanie

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She is best known
for her controversial column about political and social issues which
currently appears in the Daily Mail. Awarded the Orwell Prize for
journalism in 1996, she is the author of All Must Have Prizes, an
acclaimed study of Britain's educational and moral crisis, which
provoked the fury of educationists and the delight and relief of
parents.